WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� People spoke in whispers and craned their necks Wednesday to watch as President Donald Trump broke with all sitting presidents before him and took a seat in the front row of the chamber’s public seating area to . He sat there silently with his hands in his lap.
A man accustomed to the camera and the center of attention instead was a mute spectator, and the justices gave no acknowledgment of his presence. Still, it was a previously unheard-of flex of presidential power and prerogative.
He brought with him Attorney General Pam Bondi and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to hear his administration’s defense of his executive order to overturn the constitutional and statutory protection of birthright citizenship.
For the next hour and a half, Trump listened as the justices 鈥� liberal and conservative 鈥� peppered the administration’s lawyer with questions. Several of them, including three whom he nominated to the court, cast doubt on his planned restrictions on birthright citizenship.
During the opposing party’s arguments, Trump got up and left. And an hour after that, the president posted on social media: 鈥淲e are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow 鈥楤irthright’ Citizenship!鈥�
About guarantee citizenship to children born on their territory. However, the president’s post added to the more direct criticism Trump has hurled at the court in general and several justices in particular.
Trump recently said he was ashamed of the six justices who joined the 6-3 majority that ruled that much of Trump鈥檚 tariff agenda is illegal, and he questioned their patriotism. He seethed especially over the votes of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, two of his appointees, calling them 鈥渁n embarrassment to their families.鈥�
Chief Justice John Roberts did not mention Trump by name last month when he said that personal criticism of federal judges is dangerous and 鈥渋t鈥檚 got to stop.鈥�
If, as some legal experts said, Trump was trying to intimidate the justices, the tactic is unlikely to work.
Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA, said that justices 鈥減ride themselves in their independence, even if some agree with much of Trump鈥檚 agenda.鈥�
Richard Re, a Harvard Law constitutional law professor, said Trump鈥檚 appearance at the oral argument 鈥渋s somewhat like a reversal of the justices鈥� frequent appearances at the State of the Union address.鈥�
鈥淚 don鈥檛 think the justices will be intimidated, no matter what the president does,鈥� Re said.
His attendance added a heightened sense of theater to the otherwise staid setting. The actor Robert DeNiro, a strident Trump critic, was also in the courtroom, seated in the justices’ guest box reserved for friends and family.
The two did not speak.
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